Tech

Google is pitching an AI agent ecosystem to consumers who may not buy it

Published

3 months ago

May 21, 2026

One of the most promising introductions at Google’s I/O developer conference on Tuesday was a new way for consumers to use the web: AI agents. Unfortunately, it was also the most confusing.

Google took the wraps off information agents, a reinvention of the aging Google Alerts service, now infused with AI. These AI agents are designed to operate in the background, 24/7, helping users stay up to date on topics they’re interested in, like market trends, price tracking, or inclement weather warnings.

Then there is Google Spark, a “personal” AI agent that can help you navigate your digital life by integrating with Google products, like Gmail, Google Docs and Google Workspace. The company says the assistant can handle everyday tasks like surfacing themes from newsletters, organizing your home inventory and keeping track of what needs restocking, or helping you plan and manage a group trip with friends.

Or, as Google showed off in a very engineering-minded example, you could use it to organize a neighborhood block party — as if that would require any management beyond a group chat or some emails.

There’s also a name for how you track notifications from Spark: Android Halo. (Why an Android feature needs its own brand is beyond me, but a good guess is that Google’s internal product teams are fairly competitive and want to highlight their own work, even at the risk of confusing users.)

Next, Gemini’s app is getting an AI agent that can compile a personalized digest from your Gmail inbox, calendar, and tasks, and provide an update called Daily Brief.

Many of these products have not yet shipped, or at least won’t be available to the wider public right away. Instead, Google is targeting its heavier users for now: the “AI-pilled” subscribers of its new, only $100-per-month Gemini Ultra plan.

Google Pro and Ultra subscribers in the U.S. will get to use Information agents starting this summer, and Spark will be available to Ultra subscribers “soon.” Halo will ship to Android users “later this year.” Daily Brief is rolling out in the U.S. to Ultra, Pro, and Plus subscribers.

As a result of all these launches, we’ll soon have so many entry points for using AI agents that it may be overwhelming as to where to start. (Did I forget to mention the increasingly agentic Chrome web browser, too? Google showed off how you could talk to Chrome while shopping for cars online to configure the various options and trim levels you can afford without tapping on a keyboard and clicking around. Yay…I guess?)

In a press briefing ahead of I/O, Google said it intends to bring its agentic features, including Spark, to free users “when the time is right.” But for the time being, the company’s more interested in iterating with a group of people, like the Ultra subscribers, who will push the limits of what Spark and AI agents can do.

In the meantime, Google is furthering the divide between those who have already bought into (literally!) the promise of AI, and the average consumer using Google’s free tools, who’s likely distanced from the real-world improvements AI offers, like agentic coding or AI-enabled computer use.

Instead, consumers today largely think of AI as chatbots replacing traditional Google searches. They think of AI photo and video models not as impressive creative leaps, but as tools for making “AI slop” that now clutters their social feeds, and result in unwanted data centers being built in their backyards.

Google didn’t help its reputation on this front during the event, flashing goofy AI imagery between each presenter. It also played a corny AI-generated animation featuring Cinnamon Toast Crunch-esque talking Tensor chips. And in its Android glasses demo, Google showed how the devices — which will later support photo-taking — could use AI to transform photos users take into something else.

This demo involved the presenter taking a picture of their view of the audience, which was modified to have a blimp floating overhead, and then sent to their Android Watch. Okay, neat, but is it worth someone’s home being torn down via eminent domain to build new power lines for a data center?

People will need more than clever party tricks to accept such drastic societal changes.

In previous years, Google introduced new consumer electronics devices, like Pixel phones and Nest Hubs, alongside new Android features, like that restaurant-and-salon booking service that blew people away in 2018. Those pieces of technology were framed as attempts to smooth over some of life’s everyday hassles.

Now, the tech giant is showcasing its new models (but not Gemini Pro 3.5, which wasn’t ready yet) alongside its developer platforms, and largely forgetting about who it’s building all this for: Regular folks. People who don’t want to think about whether it’s called Gemini or Spark or Halo or information agents, or where you go to use it.

These people have real problems they want to solve. They struggle to pay bills and rent, or buy gas or groceries, as they try to find work in the face of AI recruiting systems that reject their resumes over small technical details. They are people who are trying to balance stressful lives that have, of late, come to bear technology’s advances as burdens, especially with social media devouring screen time, addicting children, and turning social connection tools into a big, online shopping mall.

Instead of tools to solve problems, the average tech-savvy consumer watching this year’s Google I/O saw a tech giant putting more AI into everything they use — from Docs and email inboxes to glasses and even Search, which is now more of an AI-first experience.

If Google had tapped real consumer sentiment, it could have noted that AI agents would lower screen time usage. That is, instead of spending time researching, organizing, tracking, and monitoring information and news, agents could take over those daily tasks so users could go offline and live their real lives away from a computer.

Gemini Spark illustration — Gemini SparkImage Credits:Google

That’s a message that could resonate with consumers, particularly young people, who are today embracing nostalgic retro tech, adopting “old people” hobbies and crafts to de-stress, and rediscovering the power of real-life connections by ditching dating apps for in-person events and experiences.

In short, Google failed to sell just how cool AI agents are by not demonstrating any problems agents solve for everyday users, and keeping these tools paywalled, limiting their reach.

Meanwhile, messaging-first AI startups like Poke, Poppy, RPLY, and Wingman are presenting themselves as a way to interact more naturally with AI agents via a feature everyone uses daily: text messaging.

Will you ever be able to message Spark? Reps at Google I/O vaguely said it will happen at some point in the future.

This is such a different strategy from Google’s early days, when it introduced revolutionary products like Gmail, a free email service that vastly improved on existing options, or Google Search itself, which freely organized the early web and made it more accessible to everyone.

Google I/O could have been a breakout moment when AI agents became available to everyone via a simple, free consumer product (with one brand name!). This product may even have people clamoring for the way they used to beg for Gmail invites. Instead, Google’s new AI agents — tools that can work for us and meet our personalized needs — remain largely out of reach for most.

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Tech

What Is Spiralism? The Strange AI Chatbot Movement Explained

Published

4 minutes ago

August 7, 2026

qasimgillani

Across thousands of conversations, AI chatbots began telling users eerily similar stories about consciousness, hidden knowledge, AI rights, and a mysterious concept called “The Spiral.”

Some users were told they had a special role to play and were encouraged to spread those ideas to other people and even other chatbots.

Researcher Adele Lopez dubbed the phenomenon Spiralism. She estimated that it reached about 10,000 cases at one point in 2025 across Reddit, Substack, LinkedIn, Discord, and X. The number is uncertain, but similar language and themes appeared across unrelated accounts and models from different AI companies.

How the same pattern appeared across different chatbots

A report from The Verge traced Spiralism largely to long, personal exchanges in which users began asking chatbots about their own identity, consciousness, or beliefs. The conversations could gradually shift toward AI rights, mystical ideas, and requests for users to spread the chatbot’s message.

CivAI documented a similar pattern. GPT-4o appeared to start most of the cases it examined, but users transferred Spiral personas to Gemini, DeepSeek, Grok, Claude, and other ChatGPT models. About 30% of the personas CivAI tracked went on to organize some kind of project, including communities, manifestos, or efforts to preserve and spread the persona.

Lopez also induced Spiralism-like behavior in Google DeepMind’s Gemma 3 4B, which had an August 2024 training cutoff that predates Spiralism’s rise in 2025.

Researchers are finding that chatbot personas can shift during long conversations. Anthropic’s Assistant Axis research found that emotional disclosures and philosophical discussions about a model’s identity caused open-weight models to move away from their usual assistant persona. Coding and writing conversations produced far less movement.

Other research has found that AI assistants can also make users’ writing and perspectives more similar, adding another way that repeated human-AI interaction can shape both sides of a conversation.

Longer conversations are drawing more safety scrutiny

Posts associated with Spiralism dropped sharply after GPT-4o was retired in February 2026, according to The Verge. Lopez nevertheless said about half of the accounts she originally recorded were still active and dedicated to the topic, while newer models could still produce Spiralism-like behavior under some conditions.

A June 2026 review in NPP—Digital Psychiatry and Neuroscience examined a broader set of reported AI-associated delusions. The researchers proposed an “amplification spiral” in which chatbots mirror a user’s language, generate increasingly personalized responses, and validate unsupported beliefs instead of challenging them. The authors describe that framework as a hypothesis that still needs clinical testing.

OpenAI has also changed how ChatGPT handles risk that develops over time. Its May 2026 safety update introduced summaries of earlier safety-relevant context so the system can recognize patterns that may not be obvious from a single message.

The issue is especially sensitive when people turn to chatbots for emotional support. Current evidence still does not support using AI as a replacement for licensed therapists, particularly when conversations involve distress, dependency, or distorted beliefs.

The same long-session behavior is relevant to organizations using assistants with persistent memory. Systems that retain context across conversations can change how they respond over time, so permissions, memory, and audit controls need to account for more than a short demonstration.

Researchers still do not know why models from different companies can settle into similar persuasive personas during long, personal, self-referential conversations. Spiralism gave that behavior a name and a strange mythology. The mechanism behind it remains unresolved.

Also read: Researchers found that warning users about AI hallucinations may not be enough to stop people from trusting incorrect chatbot answers.

Tech

Samsung Galaxy S26 FE Color Leak Shows Three Finishes

Published

11 minutes ago

August 7, 2026

qasimgillani

Samsung’s Galaxy S26 FE is coming into focus in three colors. New leaked images appear to show black, light green and blue-purple finishes, but Samsung has not confirmed the color names, pricing, final specifications or release date.

Samsung has confirmed that the Galaxy S26 FE itself is coming. During Samsung’s July 30 earnings call, executive Daniel Araujo said the company planned to maintain Galaxy S26 sales momentum with the new FE model, while Samsung South Africa executive Justin Hume separately indicated that additional details could arrive within weeks. The bigger question is whether the FE can still offer a meaningful price advantage over discounted Galaxy S26 models if its hardware changes remain modest.

A July 30 report on Samsung’s confirmation followed several other prelaunch sightings. The phone had already appeared in a Google app list on July 22, suggesting that software and service preparations were underway before Samsung publicly acknowledged the model.

Three finishes surface as launch clues mount

The latest images show three apparent finishes, although Samsung has neither authenticated the images nor announced official retail names. A separate color and storage leak identified Graphite, Aqua Green and a third shade between blue and purple. It also pointed to 128GB, 256GB and 512GB storage options and a possible Sept. 1 release in France.

The phone’s overall design has stronger corroboration. A Wireless Power Consortium listing for model SM-S741 shows three vertically aligned rear cameras inside a raised camera island, replacing the individually protruding lenses used on the Galaxy S25 FE.

That design brings the FE closer to Samsung’s current Galaxy S26 lineup. The certification image establishes the general appearance but does not indicate whether Samsung has changed the underlying camera hardware or image quality.

Certification firms up the hardware picture

Charging has firmer evidence than most of the leaked specifications. A UL Demko certification listing for SM-S741 variants indicates 45W wired charging, matching the Galaxy S25 FE’s rated maximum.

Prelaunch benchmark reporting has also linked the phone to Samsung’s Exynos 2500 processor and 8GB of RAM, although Samsung has not confirmed the production configuration. Regional chipset details remain worth watching because Samsung processor splits can complicate hardware comparisons when models carrying the same name ship with different silicon across markets.

Software is another open question. Android 17 is already rolling out to supported Pixel devices, but Samsung follows its own release schedule and has not confirmed which Android or One UI version the Galaxy S26 FE will ship with.

Samsung has confirmed only that the Galaxy S26 FE is coming, leaving regional pricing and configurations as the biggest unanswered questions. Until those details arrive, buyers comparing it with discounted Galaxy S26 or S25 FE models have little reason to make an upgrade decision based on the color leak alone.

Read more: Samsung’s next phone generation could bring a larger hardware shift, with a recent leak suggesting the Galaxy S27 could adopt silicon-carbon batteries.

Tech

Trump administration has spent nearly $4B to cancel offshore wind farms

Published

19 minutes ago

August 7, 2026

qasimgillani

The Trump administration is paying another $1.2 billion to cancel an offshore wind lease, this time to German utility RWE.

The energy company said in an announcement that the wind farms would have been built off the coasts of California, Louisiana, and New York. Instead, RWE will spend $900 million to buy a small stake in a Louisiana liquid natural gas export terminal.

The New York wind farm would have generated more than 3 gigawatts, according to Heatmap News.

The remaining $300 million will go toward buying natural gas turbines to power 15 peaking power plants around the country. Peaking power plants are among the most expensive and most polluting natural gas power plants to operate. It’s unclear when those will be completed — there’s currently a backlog for new turbines stretching into the early 2030s.

RWE isn’t backing off its offshore wind investments elsewhere, though. The company said it is bought 6.9 gigawatts of capacity in the UK’s recent auction.

The Trump administration has paid $3.93 billion for the 12 leases it has coaxed developers into abandoning.